Reflecting on MCAS ALT training

Recently I had a professional development day. I spent the day outside of my classroom learning something new pertaining to my field of expertise in educating children with significant challenges. The challenges I speak of include sensory loss issues (deafblindness), and medical issues deeming the students fragile, resulting in global developmental delays in all areas of functioning: speech, motor (fine and gross), vision, and hearing. The training today was "2014 MCAS-Alt Updates and How to Submit a Complete Portfolio for Teachers with Recent Experience Conducting MCAS-Alt". In this training we were given a flash drive as all the resources are now digital which is a plus in my opinion. The training was organized and informative and since this is my 2nd year administering the MCAS alt to my students I did not experience the frenzy and overwhelming sensation of panic that I felt last year when I attended the training as a first time teacher completing the MCAS alt.

Instead the feelings I felt today were more of disappointment and frustration as half of the training was based on "How to ensure we (teachers) submit a completed portfolio so that "we" do not end up with the dreaded score of Incomplete".  This made me ponder the fact that this is my work, my ability to follow directions in putting together the portfolio that is truly being assessed, not the authentic work of my students. The message I took home at the end of the day is that what is important here is the way that the portfolio material is organized by me, the teacher, so that the scorers can score it properly based on the rubric that we, the teachers, have to follow.

It was recommended in the training that we seek the support of our administrators to allow for flexible time away from the classroom so that we can complete the portfolios in a manner in which we are not spending all of our nights, weekends, and school vacations putting them together. Last year I spent forty hours outside of the classroom putting together the two student portfolios and half of that time was on my "own time" - after regular hours: nights, weekends, school vacations, and snow days. I am hoping that this year since I am a bit more experienced I may be able to cut that time down but realistically I will bank on 30 hours to put the portfolios together as mandated for submission to the scoring agency in the time frame required. Tell me why is this necessary? Who is truly being assessed through this process?

After all that being said it was the end of the training when the most infuriating realization was revisited. My students , despite their developmental level, are being assessed as 4th graders because that is their chronological designation. In my professional opinion as a special education teacher my students are ready for number identification and counting activities based on 1:1 correspondence. They were ready for this last year as "third graders" as well but unfortunately the math frameworks does not allow the "Counting and Cardinality" domain to be addressed unless the student is chronologically in Pre-k or Kindergarten. This idea enraged me last year but since I was so new to the whole process I did not have the time to voice my concerns but this year I could not let this go again without questioning because in my role of special education teacher professional ethics demand "Best Practices". Research states that obtaining new knowledge is most successful when it is connected to prior knowledge and that as educators we should be building strong foundations and scaffolding skills so that our students can become successful learners. This year, in fourth grade, I am mandated to teach one targeted math skill from the Operations and Algebraic Thinking domain and one targeted skill from Number and Operations-Fractions. The standards that I must teach my students at each grade level are clearly indicated in the “2014 Educator’s Manual for MCAS-Alt”. I just don’t understand why my professional opinion on what domains my students are ready to learn does not matter. We would never expect a typical Pre-k or Kindergarten student to be assessed using the 4^th grade curriculum because they are not developmentally ready. They don’t have the foundational base or prior skill set to make solid gains so why are we expecting my students who are not developmentally at grade level to perform within the domains of that grade? This just doesn’t make sense nor it is ethical in my opinion to waste time teaching my students something that they are not ready to learn because the foundation has not properly been set for them. Are we forgetting about the “zone of proximal development”? 

The zone of proximal development (ZPD) has been defined as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky, 1978, p86) retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/Zone-of-Proximal-Development.html

I am not saying my students are not able to learn but simply that they are not ready to learn what is being mandated that they learn due to their unique learner needs. The learning tasks must be meaningful, functional, engaging, and lastly POSSIBLE. So why are we saying that teachers cannot teach and assess number identification, counting, and 1:1 correspondence skills past Pre-K and Kindergarten?  

I am excited that my students are finally ready to learn these skills. So why prevent them from being successful learners at their appropriate developmental level? We need to build strong foundational skills so that they will eventually be ready to be active participants in the other areas (addition, fractions, and proportions). A strong foundation has to be established in order to build these higher level skills. Addition does not make sense if number identification skills, counting, and 1:1 correspondence skills have not been reached. 

How can I expect my students to truly succeed if I cannot build these foundational skills with them when they are truly ready to learn them? As teachers we are skilled at determining our students current level of performance so why are we not able to choose the domain in which our students are ready to learn. By teaching our students at the appropriate developmental level we would be able to assess them at the “entry level” rather than at the “access level". My students are very capable of learning! Just explain to me why their learning should be based on a different standard of progression from what is expected of “typical” learners. Why not afford my students the same liberty when learning; one step at a time, built on a solid foundation, when the brain is appropriately ready to absorb the knowledge?